Wow I really enjoyed this. So well spoken and thoughtful. Yes the extremes on both side are what tear us part, and they are actually similar in their rigidity and panic and forcefulness. Nuance has been lost. And free, critical thinking has been demonized.
Briefly I joined an activist group here in Canada, but became discouraged with how much fear they were putting in to members. I just wanted an end to the covid mandates! They wanted to attack CRT and scare us about schools etc. I kept thinking gee I don’t know much about CRT, but I’m sure my own kids can think about it for themselves, and isn’t it an idea worth considering? Yes, a lens to look thru. One problem is, though: are teachers using it that way, or is it being taught as truth?
Remember how much the media demonized people for “doing their own research” about covid?! I will never forget. I will also never forget the way a PhD cousin of mine commented to me derisively online that I was a “free thinker”--in regards to my questioning the covid narrative and some other things going on. This from a PHILOSOPHER!
Thank you for this piece. Refreshing snd hopeful.
Children--all of us--are autonomous beings! Never forget. We need to bring back critical thinking. I think it’d make a huge difference in so many arenas.
Excellent interview, thanks Tara and Amna. My main response is that it made me want to find ways to speak out more, to try to get my ideas and perceptions across - if not through speaking (which doesn’t seem to work very well for me), then perhaps in writing. I have personally experienced being shut down and silenced due to my views on current issues that are very different from the mainstream understandings. I have noticed lately that I have begun to retreat into myself more and more because I feel like a misfit and outcast in society. I can’t let this happen. I feel that I have something valuable to offer in expressing my views, and it is a terrible feeling to have one’s freedom of expression squeezed in this way. There’s a tendency to give up and say, why bother even trying to communicate, which makes it all the more important to look for different outlets to make my voice heard.
“if I can be open — is that I’m impatient. My friends will tell you that I lose patience quickly. Because once I see a point, or an argument, I struggle to understand why I’m not being able to come across to someone else. Why does someone else not see what I’m trying to say?”
Oh boy is this me too. A good friend of mine responding to someone else I was debating who was claiming I was just a big jerk said I was actually extremely warm and nice but easily irritated with arguments that I consider untrue or irrational. Life is too short. I am impatient to get to the point of rational and objective understanding.
“It was very instructive for me to listen to Salima Hashmi. She’s been in the business of education all her life. And she said, “Pontificating gets you nowhere.” The way to actually change people’s hearts and minds is more indirect. She talked about humour.”
This is a great point and one that I fundamentally know, but also struggle with. My problem is that I see the politics of the modern left being our primary existential threat today. It is so clear to me that we are seeing yet another collectivist authoritarian power grab, and it is also clear to me how this trajectory is so wrong and ultimately destructive to all that we have achieved, that it is really, really difficult for me to not point out to those that stubbornly resist that clarity… that they are freakin’ idiots that need a spanking.
My only complaint is that it's too short!!!! Thank you both. Nuance is so needed....I am recovering from multiple years of indoctrination in university re: CRT, anti-this, anti-that. Grateful for my experience as I am wiser but it is shocking how much my mindset has shifted and expanded.
Thank you for this. It has brightened my day to know that there still ARE people in the academic world who are working hard to teach their students how to think…and that all of the craziness we’ve seen these past couple of years will eventually pass. You’ve reignited my hope (and love) for humanity. 💕
Not surprisingly, our self-anointed "progressives" are only 50 years behind Pakistan. Who knew? Well, I have to admit to having figured that out a few years ago.
I've been a fan of Amna's work on Banished for a while which I got to because of my interest in Lexicon Valley. She's one of the best people out there to discuss some really important topics. Good to hear you talk and offer a solid thoughtful centrist and hopeful concepts.
Sometimes words aren't enough. Sometimes you need to act out a scene from real life, and work it into a song that everyone can sing. Like Seeta Qasimi has done.
Now watch Seeta sing Nametarsam before a live audience in Tajikistan on their national holiday. Look at the size of the crowd, but especially the young women, and imagine how they relate to the song.
Further into the video, take note of the heavy police and military presence. They are taking no chances. It's no coincidence either that Seeta opened with this song. Tajikistan has an official policy towards Islamic fundamentalism. Hijab and burqa are forbidden, and any shop caught selling them is fined and the merchandise seized. Tajik women are encouraged to wear traditional clothing, while for men, the wearing of beards is discouraged to the point that the army will round them up in the more traditional parts of the country and forcibly shave them. Speaking of the army, Tajikistan's military operates jointly with the Russian Army to patrol their frontier and prevent infiltration by radical elements.
If you're looking for irony, there's a ton of it here. Is this propaganda? Art in the service of the people, as they'd say in the USSR? Is it possible an authoritarian government can move in the direction of greater freedom? If there's a point to be made, I'd say it's that Freedom is a relative thing. By the law of thermodynamics, everything in life has a cost, including freedom. The price is how hard you're willing to defend your freedom in the face of those who would take it from you, either by force, by deceit, or just plain old good intentions.
I too have a problem with that mural. The default orientation for paintings, unless otherwise indicated from context, is viewer facing north. So by that definition, Washington is actually pointing East. Adding to the confusion is what looks like a town in the upper right corner, which also suggests East in the context of pioneering the West.
As for the dead Indian, if that offends people, just paint it out. Wouldn't be the first time a work of art was altered to fit a current narrative, point being that it's ALL narrative, unless you were there. This brings me to my actual point. If an extensive study of epistemology is not in your curriculum, then you're probably wasting your time, even in the hard sciences.
As for universities being bastions of free speech, when has that ever been the case? As far back as Socrates freedom of thought was routinely suppressed, most often in support of state authority in the guise of religion. As always, follow the money: ask who funds the institution, then look at what their other interests are. That will tell you more about their orientation than the particulars of who chairs this or that faculty.
The very fact that something becomes institutionalized, no matter what it is, is the beginning of its decline. Rather than belabour the point, I suggest reading Thomas S. Khuhns's 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions' for more insight into the problem Tom's focus is on the hard sciences, but his observations are just as relevant to any formal process involving group strategies.
If you're interested in the topic of free speech there is a great discussion on YouTube with Amna, the journalist Matt Taibbi and the former head of the ACLU. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlLr8xuJcF8
Wow I really enjoyed this. So well spoken and thoughtful. Yes the extremes on both side are what tear us part, and they are actually similar in their rigidity and panic and forcefulness. Nuance has been lost. And free, critical thinking has been demonized.
Briefly I joined an activist group here in Canada, but became discouraged with how much fear they were putting in to members. I just wanted an end to the covid mandates! They wanted to attack CRT and scare us about schools etc. I kept thinking gee I don’t know much about CRT, but I’m sure my own kids can think about it for themselves, and isn’t it an idea worth considering? Yes, a lens to look thru. One problem is, though: are teachers using it that way, or is it being taught as truth?
Remember how much the media demonized people for “doing their own research” about covid?! I will never forget. I will also never forget the way a PhD cousin of mine commented to me derisively online that I was a “free thinker”--in regards to my questioning the covid narrative and some other things going on. This from a PHILOSOPHER!
Thank you for this piece. Refreshing snd hopeful.
Children--all of us--are autonomous beings! Never forget. We need to bring back critical thinking. I think it’d make a huge difference in so many arenas.
Excellent interview, thanks Tara and Amna. My main response is that it made me want to find ways to speak out more, to try to get my ideas and perceptions across - if not through speaking (which doesn’t seem to work very well for me), then perhaps in writing. I have personally experienced being shut down and silenced due to my views on current issues that are very different from the mainstream understandings. I have noticed lately that I have begun to retreat into myself more and more because I feel like a misfit and outcast in society. I can’t let this happen. I feel that I have something valuable to offer in expressing my views, and it is a terrible feeling to have one’s freedom of expression squeezed in this way. There’s a tendency to give up and say, why bother even trying to communicate, which makes it all the more important to look for different outlets to make my voice heard.
“if I can be open — is that I’m impatient. My friends will tell you that I lose patience quickly. Because once I see a point, or an argument, I struggle to understand why I’m not being able to come across to someone else. Why does someone else not see what I’m trying to say?”
Oh boy is this me too. A good friend of mine responding to someone else I was debating who was claiming I was just a big jerk said I was actually extremely warm and nice but easily irritated with arguments that I consider untrue or irrational. Life is too short. I am impatient to get to the point of rational and objective understanding.
“It was very instructive for me to listen to Salima Hashmi. She’s been in the business of education all her life. And she said, “Pontificating gets you nowhere.” The way to actually change people’s hearts and minds is more indirect. She talked about humour.”
This is a great point and one that I fundamentally know, but also struggle with. My problem is that I see the politics of the modern left being our primary existential threat today. It is so clear to me that we are seeing yet another collectivist authoritarian power grab, and it is also clear to me how this trajectory is so wrong and ultimately destructive to all that we have achieved, that it is really, really difficult for me to not point out to those that stubbornly resist that clarity… that they are freakin’ idiots that need a spanking.
My only complaint is that it's too short!!!! Thank you both. Nuance is so needed....I am recovering from multiple years of indoctrination in university re: CRT, anti-this, anti-that. Grateful for my experience as I am wiser but it is shocking how much my mindset has shifted and expanded.
IF you're not ready to die for it, put the word 'freedom' out of your vocabulary.
- Malcolm X
Thank you for this. It has brightened my day to know that there still ARE people in the academic world who are working hard to teach their students how to think…and that all of the craziness we’ve seen these past couple of years will eventually pass. You’ve reignited my hope (and love) for humanity. 💕
Not surprisingly, our self-anointed "progressives" are only 50 years behind Pakistan. Who knew? Well, I have to admit to having figured that out a few years ago.
Excellent. Crystallized wisdom.
I've been a fan of Amna's work on Banished for a while which I got to because of my interest in Lexicon Valley. She's one of the best people out there to discuss some really important topics. Good to hear you talk and offer a solid thoughtful centrist and hopeful concepts.
CRT is not a theory, it's an IDEOLOGY.
Sometimes words aren't enough. Sometimes you need to act out a scene from real life, and work it into a song that everyone can sing. Like Seeta Qasimi has done.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyB3JziEH40
Now watch Seeta sing Nametarsam before a live audience in Tajikistan on their national holiday. Look at the size of the crowd, but especially the young women, and imagine how they relate to the song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfdTy7KK6PM
Further into the video, take note of the heavy police and military presence. They are taking no chances. It's no coincidence either that Seeta opened with this song. Tajikistan has an official policy towards Islamic fundamentalism. Hijab and burqa are forbidden, and any shop caught selling them is fined and the merchandise seized. Tajik women are encouraged to wear traditional clothing, while for men, the wearing of beards is discouraged to the point that the army will round them up in the more traditional parts of the country and forcibly shave them. Speaking of the army, Tajikistan's military operates jointly with the Russian Army to patrol their frontier and prevent infiltration by radical elements.
If you're looking for irony, there's a ton of it here. Is this propaganda? Art in the service of the people, as they'd say in the USSR? Is it possible an authoritarian government can move in the direction of greater freedom? If there's a point to be made, I'd say it's that Freedom is a relative thing. By the law of thermodynamics, everything in life has a cost, including freedom. The price is how hard you're willing to defend your freedom in the face of those who would take it from you, either by force, by deceit, or just plain old good intentions.
I too have a problem with that mural. The default orientation for paintings, unless otherwise indicated from context, is viewer facing north. So by that definition, Washington is actually pointing East. Adding to the confusion is what looks like a town in the upper right corner, which also suggests East in the context of pioneering the West.
As for the dead Indian, if that offends people, just paint it out. Wouldn't be the first time a work of art was altered to fit a current narrative, point being that it's ALL narrative, unless you were there. This brings me to my actual point. If an extensive study of epistemology is not in your curriculum, then you're probably wasting your time, even in the hard sciences.
As for universities being bastions of free speech, when has that ever been the case? As far back as Socrates freedom of thought was routinely suppressed, most often in support of state authority in the guise of religion. As always, follow the money: ask who funds the institution, then look at what their other interests are. That will tell you more about their orientation than the particulars of who chairs this or that faculty.
The very fact that something becomes institutionalized, no matter what it is, is the beginning of its decline. Rather than belabour the point, I suggest reading Thomas S. Khuhns's 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions' for more insight into the problem Tom's focus is on the hard sciences, but his observations are just as relevant to any formal process involving group strategies.
If you're interested in the topic of free speech there is a great discussion on YouTube with Amna, the journalist Matt Taibbi and the former head of the ACLU. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlLr8xuJcF8